Partial Double-Blind Peer Review

All manuscripts will be rigorously refereed by specialists external to the Editorial Council, Editorial Committee and Editorial board with wide national and international recognition through the Partial Double-Blind Peer Review procedure.

Even though access to information should be as open as possible, it is still possible to find some justifiable restrictions for an open peer review (OPR) such as reasons of confidentiality, privacy and respect for the study topics, protection of intellectual property rights and personal data. In this case, UNESCO * recommends the development of tools and protocols that allow the pseudonymization and anonymization of data, as well as mediated access systems, so that the greatest amount of information is shared. However, internationally there is no infrastructure nor the culture necessary for the implementation and development of these tools.

Thus, the review process for the articles will follow a partially double-blind peer review system involving one of the three referees. That is, each article will be evaluated by three reviewers who will submit their reports anonymously. Through a computational randomization process, the identity of one reviewer may be disclosed, enabling interaction with the author if an academically justified request is made. Such a request will be examined by the editorial board and committee for approval; if granted, both the author and the reviewer will become mutually aware of each other’s identity.

In this way, the names of the authors and two of the reviewers are not disclosed and just one of the evaluations is known. Thus, this system keeps the integrity of Open Access and Open Data procedures, and provides certainty to the peer-reviewing process.

Once the reviewers accept the procedure and the manuscript, they will examine it carefully according to their field of specialization and the publishing guidelines of FIGURAS REVISTA ACADÉMICA DE INVESTIGACIÓN. Then, they will send the opinion with either the acknowledgement (including suggestions for change) or the denial of its publication.